Good Books

Good books are like jewels—hard to come by, and harder still to find one that is truly great instead of pretty good. When I do find one, I sit down for a while to muse about it. The feeling that comes over me at these times is hard to describe—a source of warmth, or light, or maybe satisfaction simply welling up in me, filling my whole being with a sense of fullness, of the joy of simple being. There is something exquisite about reading, some sense of being yourself. You are caught up in the book so wholly, so completely that in a sense you are that girl, that boy. You lose the self-interest, the self-absorption that is common nature to all humans and thus paradoxically become more yourself than you can ever be otherwise. At the moment when you are the most engrossed in the story is when you are most yourself. Perhaps it is because your self is a never-ending resource. Everytime you read a good book, it gives you something of itself to carry with you wherever you go. Memories, certainly—I often dwell on one particular page, recreating its texture, color, even its font with loving detail, and listen to its words in my head—but something more, something of its innermost self that humans are unwilling to relinquish. And everytime you read a good book, some part of yourself goes into it. Though people say that new books are so much better than old books, I prefer old books, copies that I have pored over a million times. Because each time I did so, something of myself went into those pages, and everytime I open it again, I see that myself years earlier, even as I put in something of myself now.